Is This the Infamous “Mike’s Apartment,” aka New York’s Newest Hotspot?

February 23, 2010

Earlier this morning, Gawker introduced the world to “Mike’s Apartment,” the supposed newest addition to the NYC nightlife scene. In a “reasonable-sized studio/loft downtown somewhere,” goes the joke, the city’s fashionable elites are gathering, fleeing the depredations of the Box and the shuttered Beatrice for “a random apartment,” owned by restaurant-industry refugee named Mike, whose “new nightclub project” has brought him into contact with “some fairly unorthodox nightlife friends.” There, the city’s youthful glitterati smoke cigarettes, drink top-shelf whiskey, and party until dawn. To wit:

“Over the last couple of weeks Mike’s apartment — it has no other title — has hosted rockers like Guns’n’Roses and Sebastian Bach of Skid Row and the soul singer Daniel Merriweather. An after party for the third anniversary of the Box (where a transsexual threw up on Susan Sarandon) came complete with boxers, debutantes, strippers and models. Promoters from Avenue, 1OAK and Greenhouse bring their crowds here in a steady stream, for pre and post club debauchery. As many as 150 people have crammed into the space.”

Absolute secrecy is the place’s watchword. “Journalists from the New York Post, NBC, and the New York Times have been through,” claims Gawker, but “everyone seems to be sitting on it, keeping it to themselves.” Twittering is not allowed. It is currently the “hardest door in New York.” It’s got tons of events coming up: “a high-end New York fashion house will have a party here, and an artist will host a reception for a major exhibition.” And its location shall never be named. Unless, of course, it’s this place, at 9 Great Jones Street at the corner of Lafayette, right next to ACME?

Let’s review. The entry process to the “six story building” is described like so: “You enter the building through a red door — the buzzer is broken so you have to call someone inside to let you in (there are rumors that Mick Jagger fell at this hurdle last week). You walk past a trash can, up some rickety, black-painted stairs and turn left.” Red door, huh. This door is pretty red:

But how do we even know we’re in the right neighborhood? Well, a savvy Gawker commenter points out that before taking a seemingly unidentifiable and innocuous photo inside a top secret party den, it is advisable to disable your GPS location before taking pics with your iPhone 3G. Because it might just allow you to pinpoint where the photo was taken on a map:

There are no other red doors anywhere near this intersection. In fact, there are hardly any other six story buildings. But what about that mysterious interior, with the trash can and some “rickety, black-painted stairs?”

Looks about right, doesn’t it? Oh and dude’s wireless password, given in the article as “Nirvana1”?

It worked, right outside. Hi haters!

Now. The patent absurdity here is less the assumption that in the fishbowl of New York downtown life, meaningful secrets can be kept. They can’t be. “Mike,” whoever he is, is surely aware that his whirlwind dance with the city’s afterparty elite won’t last. The absurdity here is the idea that there is a single person who owns a loft at Great Jones Street and Lafayette who isn’t somehow famous or friends with famous people, some of whom occasionally come over to smoke and drink. The scene rapturously described in the Gawker article takes place in some version all across spacious lofts downtown in the city, every single night. Mike has a “expensive whisky and wine collection”? Who doesn’t, at that address? “The parties tend to go until sunrise”? Welcome to New York. That Nirvana-checking wireless password? We’re all a bunch of ’80s babies just trying to get our teenage years back. Hence Guns N’ Roses in the living room. And celebrities? That’s every other motherfucker in a nice apartment south of 14th Street. Dunno about those Phish and Wilco posters though, Mike. There, you may be on your own.
The Newest Hotspot in NY: Some Dude’s Apartment [Gawker]